Poetry

At Peace

I'm at peace in the wind,Its whisperings, its voices,Demented howlsSad hootingsWhen it wants to pass right through meWhen it wants to knock me off my perch,Blowing me quite over;Wants to make me quake with fearTip and tumble, nervous.

I'm at peace in the worldIn its circlings and its spinningsFound my point of stillnessWhere I can stopAll breathless,At peace in the worldSmile at the earth,RelentlessWhen it continues turning,Turning round all dizzy,Pirouetting planet.

Hyacinth: Perfume Of A Blue Breath

Life to deathLife to death to lifeLife through death,The slim, small slit of a door of deathA lightThrough which you slip.

We sleepDeep and still insideThe protecting womb in a nutshell,In a kernel,Vehemently pushing wideThrough to a breath,To live the scope and scape of a life,To flourish, diminish, die, survive,Until we are small enough to fitThrough the tiny door of deathSlim, small, impossible slitVehemently pushing throughBursting through old skins,Release.Perfume of a blue breath.

Beautiful

She is beautifulShe is beautifulShe has beautyFine silver beautyHair flies backGrey and blackWalks with graceWalks with rhythmSo arresting now that you turn your head from driving your ordinary car and - -Look.

She is beautifulShe is beautifulShe has wordsFine sparkling wordsTrue as oceansWide as lightPo e trystrik ing golddeep in veinsSo arresting now that you cease your process stop breathless where you are and - -See.

She is beautifulShe is beautifulShe has SchizophreniaWell settled inPart of herHears the voicesSo many wordsClamour ing clearSo arrestingly clear as good poetry spewing words that shine and screech for all to - -Hear.

My Old School

My sense of education,Inspiration and attainmentStill reverberates with disappointment.My sense of justice and the good in lifeStill feels victimizedBy the perversion of the English MistressWho, sensing my love for words and sacred utterance,Awarded me a ' D minus' for my poetry,My young and growing poet's soulNot needing of a knife.I still feel victim.

I still feel victimBy their inspection of my legs, hairs removed,By the shaver and the pressure of my peers,As they checked the length of my skirts,And as I ran faithfully in foolish bloomer-shortsUpon the grass that grew passionately greenAt my old school.

I still feel victimized by my last Latin teacher,A scraping from the bottom of the barrel,Whose conscience saw clear to assess my CiceroWith a ' minus forty'. Minus forty!When all the words were present and accounted.Bludgeon from an intellectual mouse!And the German teacher who announced, quite proudly,That she would rather be 'selling cabbages at Woolworths!'Why didn't she go, along with the History MistressWho taught me preciselyNothing, but who had tidy blackboard writing.

And a victim I also wasWhen from the Choir evicted,Ratty-tatty pulseless choir,Whose mistress told me clearlyThat I could engage in one form of music, never two,And my love of Folk music was the culprit,Even though I had enjoyedThe sumptuous Tchaikovsky before breakfast,My precious sense of right and wrongOffended still.

And victimized we all would feel,At never having talent recognized,Encouraged, trained or formed,Just minimized.In all the 'shows' and musicalsArtless and sorry as they were,At my old school, only the ' darlings' had a part,A song to sing, not I.Why not? I was tuneful, and with talent;Later, in the glory of a double University degreeAnd a Musical Career, I was told why not,Why I had been failed:They just didn't knowMy father was a chartered Accountant in the townOtherwise....Too late, my confidence and sense of worthFell victim.

And why I am I telling you all this,Wounds all septic still?Simply because, then powerless, so young and green,I could not tell them,The ones in office,That failed me, flawed me,So that merely in passing by,My old school,I shudder and am victim still.

Paradise Perhaps

Perhaps paradise never was lostPerverted, or never found,Hiding out behind a star.Perhaps there was ever alwaysMerely planet earth, place of struggling lifePredators and preyCompetition, even hate, abhorrenceEmergence and evolutionLabour, pain and death.

Perhaps it was always that,With glimpses of sun,Hope, glory, love, joy,As of light through leavesSometimes,At non-predictable placements;With glimpses of that other stateWe seem to knowRemember or envision,SomewherePast the road of deathAnother place,Paradise.Perhaps.

Is

My poetry is in the wisp-of-a-word.the mere whiff of a word,wafting waif through some mist-of-a-word,wafer-thin-to-disappearing wordalmost mine or yours to grasp soul of a wordglimmering light of a faint gleam of a wordairy smell of the perfume of a wordthe near-forgotten feel of the touch of a wordelusive slip of the hold of a wordthe ghost of a haunted corpse of a wordressurrected spirit of the life of a word

Mine is.

Your is:

the magnificent inter-grow, the whole of the world.Yours is,the seed, the soil of the worldthe sure surge of the pronounced said and written of the worldthe vivid flare of colourings of the see-able worldthe fine fit together, the flirt, the weave of the worldthe exhale, inhale of the worldthe step, the growth, the heave, the thrustof the whole of the world,the lush, the show, the throbthe hum of the worldloud-soft, flame-ice, green-strawsong-scream, storm-stillthe flagrant flaunt of the worldyours isitself creation, itself the lifethe Real, the Made, the Is of the worldThe IsYours IsIs.